


Drive

by Charlie Snow (Algedonic)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 02:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Algedonic/pseuds/Charlie%20Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is twenty-seven and he's driving down an empty road in the middle of nowhere looking over at his little brother in the passenger seat and thinking how beautiful he is.</p><p>(Inspired by <a href="http://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/73050.html?thread=25852250#t25852250">this</a> prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive

It sort of happens all at once, like one of those Southern spring-time storms that have the Georgia sky going from placid blue to thundering slate in, like, less than an hour. Not long enough for you to get home and grab an umbrella, anyway, and that's what this feel like; caught in the Georgia sticks in shorts and a tank top trying to find shelter as the sky goes angry and splits open and bears down on you. All at once. Terrifying but also kind of breathtaking in a way that rides the line somewhere between good and bad.

That's how it happens.

It's late morning, March, one of those grey days where the light never really changes and it's hard to tell what direction you're headed or what time it is cause the sky is one solid sheet of swirling muted grey and off-white. Dean is driving, cause that's what Dean does, measures his life in mile-markers and kill-counts, and Sam is asleep in the passenger seat. 

He's not thinking about anything in particular, not thinking at all really as his world narrows down to the two lane asphalt out the windshield and the soft sound of Sam's steady breathing on the bench seat next to him. It's almost meditative, driving like this; he can count the cars he's seen in the last hour on one hand and they're not headed anywhere specific, just him and Sam exactly here, exactly now, and for one blissfully peaceful moment all the blood and grief and pain and bullshit on either side of them just slips away.

He glances over at Sam and his breath catches, stomach does that clenching flip-flop thing like when you hit the sudden drop on a roller-coaster or crest a hill too fast in a car.

Sam is _beautiful_.

 

~

 

The memories come sharp and quick and brutal.

Dean is four years old and the house is on fire and he's got a screaming infant in his arms as he stands barefoot in the front yard and that was the moment, right there, where _take care of Sammy_ became the most important thing in Dean's life.

Dean is ten years old and Sam trips in the gravel of the driveway and skins his knee, scrapes his palms, and he comes to Dean with tears in his eyes and blood running down his shin and he could have gone to Dad but he comes to Dean, and Dean takes him inside and washes the blood off, rinses the gravel from the wounds and puts band-aids on them and Sammy stops crying when Dean kisses them better.

Dean is twelve and Sammy just won't quit asking questions. _When is Dad coming back_ and _how come we move so much_ and _are monsters real_ and it's almost Christmas and Dean doesn't want to tell him but Sammy just won't quit asking. When Dad doesn't come back and Sam presses the present he wrapped for him into Dean's hands and says _I want you to have it_ Dean's throat closes up and his chest aches and after that he doesn't take that necklace off for anything.

Dean is fourteen and Sam gets nightmares a lot, crawls under the covers with Dean even when they have their own beds for a change and Dean doesn't mind, just rubs Sam's back as Sam curls up next to him and tells him that everything is gonna be alright and Dean's never gonna let anything bad happen to him and he means it.

Dean's seventeen and he starts Sam off with a .22 rifle and works his way up and Sam beams every time he breaks a bottle and Dean says _Fuckin' natural, what'd I tell you, gonna be a better shot than me soon._

Dean's eighteen and Sam's got a black eye and a split lip when he meets Dean after school and Dean sees red, wants to hunt the kid down and skin him alive for having the goddamn audacity to lay his hands on his brother but Sam just grins at him and says _It's okay, Dean, I won, you shoulda been there, he totally had it coming,_ man _I wish you coulda seen it_ and Dean's secretly glad he didn't cause he'd probably be in jail right now for putting a fourteen year old in the hospital so instead he takes Sam home and presses a bag of frozen peas to the eye and lets Sam drink a beer with dinner.

Dean's twenty and he picks Sam up after school and drives them to a cemetery on the edge of town, stops the car, holds out the keys and says _You hurt her and I hurt you_. Sam's mouth falls open and his eyes widen and Dean just grins at him. They drive around that cemetery every day after school for a week and then they graduate to back roads, highways, freeways, and Sam's a natural, never panics, and Dean's a little bit surprised the first time he catches himself watching Sam instead of the road, trusting his little brother to get them where they're going.

Dean's twenty-one and Sam's fighting with Dad and he doesn't even know what it's about, doesn't even know if they do, anymore, but when the sharp sound of a backhand ends the screaming like the period at the end of a sentence Dean is on his feet before he's even realized he's moved, is snarling and shoving their father out the door while Sam stands there with a hand on his cheek and a dumbstruck expression on his face. When the door is locked and the sound of gravel crunching under truck tires has faded and they're alone Sam looks at him, sort of lost, and says _I don't know what to do._ And Dean doesn't either, truthfully, so he does what he's always done and wraps his arms around Sam and tells him everything's gonna be okay, even if neither of them really believe it.

Dean is twenty-two and Sam is gone and Dean doesn't know who he is anymore. Sam walks away from him with a duffel bag of clothes and a letter of acceptance to Stanford University and Dean's heart and soul and all the oxygen in the atmosphere and Dean doesn't remember the last time he cried but he does now, cries so hard it feels like he's breaking and then chokes down enough whiskey to kill a small farm animal and then cries some more. Sam is gone and Dean has nothing but the hope that maybe Sam will finally be happy and it's the only thing that lets him get out of bed in the morning.

 

~

 

Dean is twenty-seven and he's driving down an empty road in the middle of nowhere looking over at his little brother in the passenger seat and thinking how beautiful he is, how fucking _strong_ , thinking that he'd like to be the one to kiss Sam's scars and make him smile because it lights up the whole fucking universe when he does, that he'd like to run his fingers through Sam's hair and feel his breath on his chest when he wakes up every morning.

Dean is twenty-seven and once he thinks it he can't stop thinking it, five little words skittering around in his head and tying his stomach up in knots and making his ears ring and his throat close up and his vision blur and he thinks this might be what a panic attack is. 

_I'm in love with Sam._

He pulls over to the side of the road, hands shaking and a cold sweat dripping down his back and manages to get himself out of the car as the world spins around him. He can't breathe, his lungs aren't working and his heart is racing so fast that it actually _hurts_.

_I'm in love with Sam._

There's a field off the side of the highway and Dean stumbles out there, thankful for once that Sam has been having trouble sleeping cause he's still passed out in the car and Dean... _can't._ Not right now.

_I'm in love with Sam._

He sits down - collapses, actually - and doesn't even notice as the cold wet mud cakes under his fingers and soaks through his jeans. Sam is his _brother_ , his smart, capable, independent little brother and Dean is sitting in a field with _I'm in love with Sam_ repeating in his head like some fucked up Buddhist mantra or Latin summoning ritual and he doesn't even know where to go from here, _I'm in love with Sam_ sitting there like a concrete fucking wall at the end of the line.

Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, gotta go _through_ it and then he's laughing, shrill and hollow and manic and he sounds terrifying even to himself, and the laughing turns to choking and Dean doesn't know what to do.

 _I'm in love with Sam_.

And it makes sense, Dean figures, in the fucked up, totally abnormal way that anything in his life ever makes sense. He's built his life around Sam, accomodated and adjusted and yielded so much - took up the knife and unflinchingly carved out a Sam-shaped place in the middle of his chest - that it makes _sense_ that Sam became the center of it all, the one thing he wants, one thing he _needs_ , and the fact that it doesn't surprise him to realize it runs as deep as it does is kind of absolutely fucking terrifying.

_I'm in love with Sam._

He doesn't know how he kept the secret from himself for so long, because this isn't a new feeling. He sits there in the mud as it starts to rain and tries to pinpoint exactly when the line between _brother_ and _whatever this is_ started to blur and he can't do it. Sam's always been more, more than little brother and more than best friend and more than _everything_. Even before the fire, when Sam was two weeks old and wouldn't stop crying and his mother was exhausted and his dad was at work - even then - when Dean sat on the couch and held Sam in his chubby little arms and Sam hushed right up and wrapped his tiny fingers around Dean's thumb - _even then_ \- he thinks he would have tried to build a rocket in the back yard and fly into space and snatch the moon out of the sky if the pink little bundle in his arms wanted him to.

It's not new. It's the oldest, truest thing about him and he couldn't shut it down or tear it out if he tried.

 _I'm in love with Sam._

He has no idea how long he sits there. He's freezing and soaked but he doesn't feel it and he's in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere and _I'm in love with Sam_ repeats so many times in his head that it starts to lose its meaning and he's no closer to just what, exactly, he's supposed to do about it when he looks up and there he is.

He didn't hear the car door and he didn't hear Sam calling his name but Sam's there, right in front of him, looking confused and concerned and he can't do anything but stare at him.

"Dean?" He asks, stupid gorgeous caring Sammy and Christ, he can't do this.

"I-" 

It's all he can say, and then Sam is on his knees in the mud in front of him, hands on his shoulders and sliding up his neck and palming at his cheeks, checking him over, and Dean just stares.

"Christ, Dean, you're fucking freezing. How long have you been out here, what-"

And then Dean's hand is on Sam's wrist and he doesn't know how it got there and Sam stops, just _looks_ at him. 

He doesn't know what Sam sees, but his eyes widen a little and he just says "Oh." and slumps down right there, cross-legged in front of Dean in a fucking field in the middle of nowhere.

Dean doesn't know what that means, has no idea what's going on. Sam is biting his lip and glancing between Dean's face and his own lap and Dean doesn't have the capacity to process what's happening behind Sam's eyes right now so he just sits there, shell-shocked and frozen and waits for something to happen.

_I'm in love with him. I'm in love with Sam._

He can't do it. He closes his eyes, head dropping into his hands and he's breathing too fast, shaking, and then Sam's hand is on the back of his neck and he's talking.

"Hey hey hey, Dean, breathe, okay? Just breathe, come on, it's okay." And he's rubbing these small little circles with his thumb at the nape of Dean's neck and Dean sucks in a shuddering breath, tries to let it out slow but Sam doesn't _know_ , it's _not_ okay, it's fucking _terrifying_ and everything is falling apart.

"I know." Sam says quietly and that steals all the air from his lungs, stops him dead in his tracks, makes him look up and meet Sam's eyes cause he says it like he _does_ , like he knows _exactly_ what's going on and there's just no way, he can't or he wouldn't sound like that, sure and steady and understanding.

"You... What?" Dean croaks out and he sounds wrecked, hoarse, but Sam doesn't take his hand off Dean's neck.

Sam lets out a heavy breath, looks away. "I was twelve. I, uh-" he laughs a little, unsteady, shaky. "You seemed so big back then, Dean. Still do sometimes. But anyway, we were at Bobby's and you were practicing rebuilding engines on one of those junkers and I was watching you and you'd had this girlfriend, before, and when we left town she came to say goodbye." Sam pauses, takes his hand from Dean's neck and folds it in his lap with the other one and looks down at them and Dean can't breathe. "And so I was sitting there on the steps with a juice-box watching you and I-" he glances up, little smile at the corner of his mouth "You stick your tongue out when you're concentrating, sometimes. You get this-" he gestures toward his forehead "this little wrinkle, between your eyebrows." He clears his throat, looks down again. "Anyway. I was sitting there and I just remember wondering... I couldn't stop wondering what it would feel like if you kissed _me_ like that."

Everything just... _stops_. Dean is staring at Sam and Sam is staring at his hands and nothing moves; even the fucking _raindrops_ just hang there, waiting.

Dean can't think. He feels like he should say something, mouth opening and closing wordlessly, but he has no idea _what_. He's totally without a map here, doesn't even think they _make_ maps for the place he is, and then Sam looks up at him, apprehensive but determined, and Dean is struck dumb, again, by just how fucking _brave_ Sam is, has always been. It's pride, this time, that clogs up his throat and presses against his lungs.

"I didn't really realize how, you know... _not normal_ it was until I was fifteen. It just never... _felt_ weird, you know?" He glances up at Dean then, and Dean swallows. Yeah, he knows. It's why he's sitting in a fucking field in the middle of nowhere having the biggest existential crisis of his life. "But then, uh, we had this project, in school, where we had to write about where we saw ourselves in ten years. And everybody was talking about getting married and having kids, going to college or building schools in Africa or whatever and I-" Sam scrubs a hand over his face, meets Dean's eyes, doesn't look away this time as he goes on, "and I just sat there and everything sounded really far away, muffled, like I was under water or something cause everything I thought of, everything I _wanted_ , I just... _didn't._ Unless I was with you. Getting married never occurred to me and having kids just seemed... irresponsible. I thought about going to college, but I pictured coming home and doing my homework while I waited for you to get home from work and..." he laughs a little, "I bolted. I ran to the bathroom and I felt like I was gonna throw up but I didn't, I just sat there, through the rest of English and all through lunch and right on into pre-calc and tried to figure out what the _hell_ was wrong with me."

"Is that when-" 

There had been a few weeks when Dean was nineteen that Sam had stopped talking to him, blushed and stammered every time Dean had tried to get a word out of him, locked himself in his bedroom from the time he got home in the afternoon until he left again in the morning. Dean had figured he'd gotten a girlfriend or something, but couldn't figure out why Sam thought that warranted all the distance. Those few weeks had _sucked_.

Sam smiles. "Yeah. I tried everything. Not talking to you, having sex..." he grins a little, "research."

And it's just... absurd. Fifteen year old Sam sitting at the library looking up... what, exactly?

Dean laughs. Can't fucking help it. It's just so _Sam_ , and this situation is so goddamn _surreal_ , which - they hunt monsters, okay? There's not much that gets to Dean anymore, but they're sitting here in a field, dripping wet, talking about loving each other too much and Sam's done _research_ and Dean just cracks. He laughs and laughs and Sam laughs with him and when he finally reels it in and looks at Sam he's caught off guard for a second by how _not scared_ he is, anymore. This is just... him and Sam. Same as it's always been. "You didn't."

Sam's still smiling. "'Course I did."

"Did it help?" Dean asks, because he genuinely wants to know.

"Not really. There's not a whole lot of information out there - there was even less back then. But... we're not the only ones. You know that, right? And even if we were-" Sam trails off. "Look, I know you, Dean. Better than anyone. And I know that right now you've got so much going on in your head that you don't even know where to start, but I've had a long time to think about all this, okay? And I need you to know that you didn't... this isn't anyone's _fault_. I know how you work and somewhere down the road the guilt's gonna hit and you're gonna wonder what you did to make me like this but you didn't. You didn't do anything. I could cite you hundreds of articles on survivors of trauma and codependent relationships, give you every fucking psychological paper that's ever been written that does anything to explain this but it doesn't _matter_ , okay? It doesn't _matter_ why."

And Dean doesn't really want to think about it, much less _talk_ about it, but he knows they have to. Sam knows, and now Dean does too, and it's sitting right there between them and they can't ignore it. "Of course is matters, Sam."

"No." Sam shakes his hand, grabs Dean's hand, and Dean's breath catches. "No. It doesn't. Because it doesn't _change_ anything, Dean. 8 years I've been asking myself why and at the end of the day I'm still that twelve year old kid in a scrap yard watching my big brother tear down a motor wondering what it would be like if he kissed me."

"Sam-"

"So even if you never do, even if this is far as this ever goes, just _don't_ , okay? Just _don't_. Don't do what I did and pull back and stop talking to me and try to _fix_ it because you can't. You can't fix it. There's nothing to fix. And I can't-"

"Sam-" _Christ_ , fucking kid talks a lot.

"do that, okay, Dean? I can't. Not now. Not after-"

And Dean shuts him up the only way he can think of, smashes his mouth into Sam's gracelessly and it's not good, kinda hurts, actually, until Sam relaxes and Dean tilts his head and gets his hand in Sam's hair and then it's better, much better, brilliant even cause even in this they move together like a well-oiled machine. He kisses Sam and Sam kisses him back and there's two decades of shared history behind it and _shit_ it's perfect.

He pulls back and Sam is looking at him like Dean hasn't seen in years, wide-eyed and awe-stricken and he's taking these quick little breaths, touching his lips with two fingers like he can't quite believe what just happened and Dean feels better, like he's got his legs back under him.

"You-" Sam says, and doesn't say any more.

"Okay?" Dean asks, just that, cause Sam is a smart kid, doesn't need Dean to spell it all out.

Sam nods. "Yeah. Yes. _Dean_."

It's not gonna be easy. Dean knows that. Sam is right - he's got too much going on in his head right now and there will probably be guilt later on and he's gonna have mountains upon mountains of shit to work through before he's ever gonna be 100% okay with this, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want it. Doesn't mean he's not _sure_.

_I'm in love with Sam._

It's the oldest, truest thing about him, and he doesn't have the strength to fight it anymore. Not now. Not after everything.

"C'mon." He gets up, holds out a hand to Sam and pulls him to his feet. He slings an arm around Sam's shoulder as they trudge through the mud toward the road. "I'm fucking soaked."

"Yeah. About that." Sam says, tentatively hooks his own arm around Dean's waist, and fuck that. He grabs Sam's hand, pulls it around and plants it firmly on his hipbone. He can _hear_ Sam's smile. "How long have you been out here?"

"No idea." 

And as they get back to the car Dean thinks, just this once, that he'll let Sam drive.


End file.
